Rep. Sam Farr, Hot and Cold, but It’s All Good

Rep. Sam Farr of Monterey, one of the last uncommitted super delegates, will endorse Sen. Barack Obama after the primaries end tonight.

Asked what took him so long, Farr said, “All along I thought the primary ought to let people participate, and not just just ask super delegates how they feel, let the people express themselves.”

Farr said he ran “hot and cold. I voted for Hillary in the primary but I really liked Barack, and I thought that they ought to just keep campaigning, because everything I saw was positive. The fact that more people were registering to vote, money was being raised, and more people were turning out to cast their vote in historic numbers, and it seemed to me all that was good.

“And why try to end this fast, which was what the pressure was all about. To make your decision so that we can end it, and I didn’t want to end it. I wanted it to go the whole route of all the primaries, so tonight it’s gone the route, it’s close, I like them both, I think they’d both be great presidents. It seems like Hillary doesn’t have the votes, and after tonight she’s not going to get the nomination, and I don’t want it to go now into a backroom, bar-room fight between Barack and Hillary up until the convention. I think we ought to spend all the time now healing party, and use the convention as a celebration of unity.”

As for healing the party, Farr said all elected officials have been on a ballot, and “whether we’ve won we’ve lost, the heat of the battle is always very emotional. But what I found is most people really liked them, and if they were Barack supporters but Hillary got the nomination they’d support her and vice versa. I think most of the party is already healed because we have such super candidates.

Farr likes the idea of Clinton as vice president. Asked about Bill Clinton’s baggage, he said, “I think you work those things out, make him ambassador to the United Nations.”

He said there are no hard feelings between the two camps in Congress, because everyone is “looking toward Novermber, and what we can do to improve our numbers in the House and Senate. We know we need to win the White House to do anything. We can’t get anything done now, and if McCain’s elected, it’s the same-old, same-old.”